Trump Denounces F.B.I. Over Leaks, Demanding Investigation

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President Trump on Wednesday. “The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,” he said on Twitter.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday assailed the F.B.I. as a dangerously porous agency, charging that leaks of classified information from within its ranks were putting the country at risk — and calling for an immediate hunt for the leakers.

Mr. Trump’s complaints were his latest attacks on his own government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which he has characterized as misguided, irresponsible and politically motivated. The criticisms appeared to be a response to a news report Thursday night indicating that a White House official had asked the F.B.I. to rebut an article detailing contacts between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russian intelligence officials.

The report on Thursday night by CNN asserted that a White House official had called top leaders at the F.B.I. to request that they contact reporters to dispute the account, which appeared last week in The New York Times. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday morning that the CNN report was “indefensible and inaccurate,” and he has also called the Times article untrue.

But on Friday morning, Mr. Trump’s focus was on which members of his administration were sharing unflattering information about him with reporters, and his desire to find the perpetrators.

The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security "leakers" that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even......

Mr. Spicer argued on Friday that CNN had misreported a series of exchanges between Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, and leaders of the F.B.I. in the wake of the Times report.

At a briefing conducted on the condition of anonymity for the White House press pool, senior administration officials said it was top F.B.I. officials — first Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy director, and later James B. Comey, the director — who approached Mr. Priebus the day after the article appeared to say that it was false.

Mr. Priebus, according to the White House officials, then asked the men what they could do to rebut it publicly. They apologized and said they were unable to issue a statement or otherwise comment on the matter, according to the White House briefing.

At one point, the White House officials said, Mr. Priebus asked Mr. McCabe if he could say publicly that “senior intelligence officials” had informed him that the Times article was inaccurate, and he was told that he could. Mr. Priebus did that in an interview on Sunday.

The F.B.I. on Friday declined to provide its account of those conversations and declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s Twitter statements.

The executive editor of The Times, Dean Baquet, said on Friday that “The Times had numerous sources confirming this story.”

“Attacking it does not make it less true,” Mr. Baquet said.

An F.B.I. official confirmed on Thursday night that the White House had asked last week for the bureau’s help disputing the story, and that senior F.B.I. officials had rejected the request, citing the continuing investigation into Russian efforts to affect the election.

The official declined to say whether White House officials had reached out directly to Mr. Comey, Mr. McCabe or others. The official said the White House had reached out to American intelligence agencies in the hopes of enlisting their help.

Tension between the F.B.I. and the White House is not unheard-of. President Bill Clinton had an icy relationship with his F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh, whose agents investigated the president and his associates for years. But it is very unusual for a president to openly criticize the entire bureau.

Mr. Trump’s remarks add to an already unusual moment in history for the F.B.I. The bureau, along with other American intelligence agencies, has concluded that Russia unleashed a hacking campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, in part to help Mr. Trump. F.B.I. agents are also investigating some of Mr. Trump’s former campaign advisers and associates.

Mr. Trump has been disparaging the intelligence community for months, particularly in response to its conclusion that Russia sought to influence the election on his behalf.

In December, he suggested that United States intelligence agencies could not be trusted because they erroneously concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In January, he denounced leaks emanating from the intelligence community and argued that they were politically motivated. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he said.